In April, PBS announced that it will reboot Firing Line, the long-running public affairs television program hosted by William F. Buckley. The new show will be hosted by the libertarian-conservative commentator Margaret Hoover. We wish the endeavor well, although we wonder why Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, as the new program is to be called, should be burdened with the older program’s name, bound up as the old Firing Line was with the inimitable personality of its famous host.
Whatever the show’s name, there’s still plenty of demand for literate and civil interview-based programs on public affairs. Witness the delightful and illuminating web-based Conversations with this magazine’s founding editor, Bill Kristol, which The Scrapbook has often touted and many of our readers tell us they have hugely enjoyed.
Bill has interviewed scores of intellectuals and political leaders. Among The Scrapbook’s favorite conversations: those with University of Virginia professor of politics James Ceaser, Justice Samuel Alito, Princeton legal scholar Robert George, AEI scholar and North Korea expert Nicholas Eberstadt, and Commentary editor John Podhoretz.
In the latest conversation, posted this week, Kristol talks to our brilliant colleague Weekly Standard national correspondent Christopher Caldwell on the subject of European populism. Caldwell’s answer to the question of the European Union’s future—is it at the end of its road?—got our attention. “Yes, it is,” he said,
This and all of Kristol’s other interviews may be viewed—commercial-free and without a paywall—at conversationswithbillkristol.org.
